Real Dictators - Pol Pot Part 2: Welcome to the Jungle

Episode Date: June 21, 2022

Saloth Sar, the young man who will become Pol Pot, arrives in France in 1949. In just a few short months, he will be transformed into a die-hard communist rebel. Meanwhile, in Cambodia, things are coming to the boil. Returning from Europe, Sar goes to ground with the Vietnamese communists. He begins to prepare his very own revolution… A Noiser production, written by Dan Smith. This is Part 2 of 4. For ad-free listening, exclusive content and early access to new episodes, join Noiser+. Now available for Apple and Android users. Click the Noiser+ banner on Apple or go to noiser.com/subscriptions to get started with a 7-day free trial. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

TD Direct Investing offers live support, so whether you're a newbie or a seasoned pro, you can make your investing steps count. And if you're like me and think a TFSA stands for Total Fund Savings Adventure, maybe reach out to TD Direct Investing. It's October 1949. After a long sea voyage, the young Cambodian Salot Sa has just made land in France. It seems inconceivable that this privileged student will shortly be transformed into a die-hard communist, let alone that he will later become one of the world's bloodiest dictators. bloodiest dictators. Sarr arrives at Paris' Gare de l'Est on a bleak and wet Saturday,

colder than anything he's ever experienced. He's met by representatives of the Khmer Student Association, the AEK, which has a strong presence in the French capital. With his clothes entirely unsuited to this climate, they take him straight to a local market to get kitted out. It's not long before Sa starts to find his groove. One of King Sihanouk's nephews is also in Paris. As a fellow Cambodian abroad, he takes Sa under his wing. He helps Sa to find lodgings not too far from the radioelectricity school where he is to study. Sa may have some experience of the boulevards and the café culture replicated in Phnom Penh,

but even still, Paris is an assault on the senses. The iconic architecture, the Eiffel Tower and Notre Dame, the sheer scale of the place. and Notre Dame, the sheer scale of the place. But more than that, Paris is having a moment, finding its feet in the aftermath of the war. The left bank buzzes with energy. This is the Paris of Camus and Sartre, holding forth in bars wreathed in the smoke of Gaulois cigarettes while bands play bebop in the corner. A far cry from the Phnom Penh Technical School. Saar becomes an active member of the Khmer Student Association. He attends their study circles. In early 1950, Saar is flicking through the AEK's newsletter when he spots an advertisement

for a couple of summer trips. The first is to go camping in Switzerland, enticing but expensive. The second option is to visit Yugoslavia. Yugoslavia is another country that bears the scars of war. It is attempting to plot a path to communist paradise under its leader, Tito. The advert specifies that AEK members will join an international labor brigade in Zagreb, helping to build a motorway. It sounds like hard work, but, crucially, this trip, unlike the Swiss vacation, is free

of charge. Tsar's decision to go to Zagreb will prove a fateful one. He witnesses the workings of an established communist society up close. Not that he is wedded to the left-wing cause at this point. His transition from hedonist to activist is only just beginning. And if he has any political goals at this stage, it is independence for his homeland. Back in Cambodia, the independence movement is at a critical juncture. Self-determination is now a goal shared across the political spectrum.

But there are three major groups competing to achieve it. The first consists of Notre-Dame-Siena and his democrat-dominated parliament, with whom the king has an uneasy alliance. The next group is the Khmer Isarak, the freedom fighters. Then there are those who have thrown in their lot with the Vietnamese communists. Right now, who will emerge victorious is anybody's guess. To the small clique of Cambodian students in Paris, such machinations feel a long way away. For now, for them, Cambodian independence is more an abstract concept,

something to discuss over a coffee in the 18th arrondissement. From 1951, a group of the AEK's core membership becomes drawn to communism. In their study circles, this is the ideology they've alighted on. They want a new, independent Cambodia to be rooted in the principles of radical equality. They set up a secretive Marxist circle, made up of cells of no more than six people. These subgroups rarely interact with each other. Membership is prestigious and coveted.

Towards the end of 1951, Salat Sa is admitted to one of these cells. They meet for just a couple of hours once a week in an apartment close to the Engineering Institute. This humble reading group will prove enormously influential. It brings together many of the key personalities who will shape Cambodia's destiny over the next half a century. Professor Alex Hinton. A number of them began reading Marx, Lenin, and they were influenced. He really grabbed hold of this. More broadly, thinking about why projects of mass murder or mass atrocity take place, they're often guided by conviction,

oddly enough. You think of the word conviction, most people think that's positive. But you have convictions that also can lead to very bad consequences. This became a core part of his identity. He found a cause, he found a purpose in life, and unfortunately that led to absolutely horrific things in Cambodia. For the time being, Sa is content to stay in the shadows, attending meetings, but letting others lead them. By his own admission, he finds Marx bewildering. He prefers Stalin and Mao. From Stalin he picks up the need for dogged and demanding leadership. He is attracted to the Man of Steel's idea that you can maintain standards through rigorous criticism and self-criticism. In other words, periodically

purging oneself and one's party of destructive elements. And don't forget to keep a constant lookout for tricksters, opportunists, and foreign agents. And when you find them, you must ruthlessly suppress them. In Mao's writings, Tsar values the revolutionary role of the peasants. Communism, certainly in the Soviet Union, has sought to elevate the proletariat, the industrial working class But in Cambodia, as in China, the real powerhouse of the working class is the rural labour force Sa promptly joins the French Communist Party They are enjoying considerable success Communist-inflected government in Paris is a realistic possibility

The future Pol Pot knows all about the French Revolution And its ideals of liberty, fraternity and equality He revels in the suppression of opposition via the guillotine And the willingness of leaders like Robespierre to push on with change whatever the cost And he absorbs the message that private property is an evil and the willingness of leaders like Robespierre to push on with change whatever the cost. And he absorbs the message that private property is an evil. Well-to-do Cambodian students like Salah Tsar have grown up in a French educational system that has taught them the history of the French Revolution since their infancy. How ironic that it should now serve as Tsar's model for getting the French out of his country once and for all.

They saw lots of different models over time that influenced them, and perhaps the message was there are different ways to carry out revolution, and we need to find our own path forward. While Saar is in Paris immersing himself in left-wing literature, back in Cambodia, things have come to the boil. King Sihanouk is desperate to placate his critics, who accuse him of moving too slowly, and to shore up his own position as the father of the nation.

He decides the time has come to take decisive action. In June 1952, the king dismisses parliament, hands himself emergency powers, and promises Cambodian independence within three years. It's quite the manifesto. But Sihanouk and the monarchy remain highly popular in Cambodia. What the people really want is freedom from the French, not to overthrow their king. If he can deliver on his promise of national autonomy,

he will likely see off his domestic opponents. For Salazar, far away in Paris, the authoritarian lurch of his king is the spur he needs to emerge, albeit extremely cautiously, out of the shadows. Under the pseudonym Khmer Daum, or Old Khmer,

Saar pens an article criticizing what he calls the putrefying sore of monarchy. This piece is not widely read beyond his immediate circle, but it does mark his arrival as a figure of genuine revolutionary intent. In October 1952, Sa and his Marxist colleagues meet at a farmhouse

deep in the French countryside. Enough words. It's time for action. They decide to send one of their number back to Cambodia on a reconnaissance mission to determine which of the various independence movements the students should back. Sa eagerly volunteers for the job. Within a couple of months, Sa is lying on a bunk in a cabin, once more holed up with French troops on their way to the conflict in Vietnam.

Little do these soldiers know, within weeks their young cabin mate will be embedded with their enemy. As chance would have it, Sa is back on the SS Jamaic, the very ship that brought him to France three years earlier. But the dissolute youth of those days is long gone. He is a man now, on a mission. When Salah Tsar docks in Saigon on January 13, 1953, the urgency of his task becomes only more apparent. Entering Cambodia, Tsar discovers a country he hardly recognizes, blighted by war and surging poverty,

and with a king attempting to rule by decree. The French, meanwhile, are under pressure from all sides. In Vietnam, they're snarled up fighting the Viet Minh. In Cambodia, pro-independence movements of all stripes are gaining ground. It's fast becoming an Indo-Chinese nightmare. As 1952 rolls into 53, there are incidents of terrorist violence towards French military personnel and civilians. The erosion of French authority and, crucially, morale, plays right into King Sihanouk's hands. He's barely into his thirties, but Sihanouk is about to prove once and for all

that he is no French puppet. He summons the administrators. Let me take this problem off your plate, he tells them. The French know their own hand is weak, but if they work with him, they might at least oversee an orderly transition to independence, perhaps even maintain a foothold in the region. The decision is made. On November 9th, 1953, the King oversees a mass parade of Cambodian and French troops in the capital. Afterwards, he signs the document that signals the official end of French rule. As he promised he would, Sihanouk has taken back Cambodia. At this pivotal moment, the man who will become Pol Pot finds himself a few hundred miles from Phnom Penh. Salat Sa and a handful of colleagues are hidden away on a guerrilla base somewhere on the South Vietnamese border.

Sa has been unimpressed by most of the Cambodian independence fighters he has encountered thus far. This group is not serious enough. That one is being manipulated by the French, another is too closely tied to the King. In the end, he has concluded that an organization called the Kampuchean People's Revolutionary Party is his best bet. The Kampucheans are communists in league with the Viet Minh, North Vietnam's revolutionary vanguard.

Sa's fact-finding mission out of Paris has snowballed into something more hands-on. He now finds himself deep in the jungle, attempting to build ties between the Kampucheans and their Vietnamese hosts. Sa remains suspicious of the Viet Minh, but they are already seasoned anti-colonial fighters. They are doing what Saar and his comrades have only talked about,

and the communists need all the help they can get. King Sihanouk's recent achievements have shifted the goalposts. Cambodia is about to win what no other part of Indochina has. Journalist and author Elizabeth Becker. Vietnam was divided. Laos did not remain whole. Cambodia was the only country that was able to get full independence and remain a whole country. And Sihanouk cleverly took full credit for this, giving no credit for the really strong but small independence movement, including communists, that had been in Cambodia. For the Cambodian Marxists, the war to be fought is no longer against a foreign foe. The true enemy is now within.

For the Viet Minh, for now at least, the French remain in their crosshairs. Life at the Viet Minh camp is unforgiving. Sa wears the regulation uniform, shirt and trousers dyed black with berry juice, sandals cut from car tires, and a red and white checked krama, a sort of bandana. The jungle fauna provides a constant ambient backdrop. There is a permanent heat haze. The only shelter is under canvas, which can be moved at short notice in the event of aerial attacks or artillery barrage by French forces.

Sa feels less like a brother in arms, more a suspect under surveillance. The Cambodians must earn the Vietnamese trust. We're Cambodian, but we're being treated like second and third class citizens by the Vietnamese communists. And here I am, Salat Sa, I'm just back from Paris and I'm put on duty carrying dirt around. They were not given the status they thought they deserved. Saar and his comrades are given the most mundane tasks. They feed the chickens and water the crops. It's a test.

How committed are they to the cause? Gradually, they prove their mettle. But then, in 1954, Salaf Saar is blindsided by an unexpected development. France and the Viet Minh, the bitterest of enemies, cordially sit down to sign the Geneva Accords. This agreement effectively hands North Vietnam to the rebels, and heralds the creation of a socialist government in Hanoi. and heralds the creation of a socialist government in Hanoi. After the prelude of Cambodian independence, these accords really do end French involvement in Indochina.

It's a huge victory for the Viet Minh, but for their Cambodian understudies, it's devastating. Tsar and the rest of the Kampuchean party had been counting on the Viet Minh to return the favor, to help the Cambodian communists get their own territory once the struggle in Vietnam was done. But now with the French capitulation, the Viet Minh suddenly have it all. They are soon too busy with matters at home to back the Campuchians in any significant way. us at home to back the Kampucheans in any significant way. They got left out at the bargaining table when negotiations were undertaken with the Geneva Accords.

Vietnamese communists got the northern part of Vietnam, as we know from that history, and the Cambodian revolutionaries got basically nothing. You know, what would have happened if they'd gotten something? That could have been a different sort of history. But again, there was this long-standing, going back to this theme, perception that somehow they had been betrayed by Vietnamese communist revolutionaries and this sense of distrust, of being sort of lesser, resenting the way they're being treated. Back over the border in 1955, King Sihanouk calls elections in newly independent Cambodia.

Salah Tsar is quick to react. He helps found a new political party, the Krom Prakyakon. The idea is a novel one, revolution at the ballot box. But there is really only one political show in town, the Democratic Party, the pro-independents who were also wary of the monarchy. King Sihanouk begins to worry he's made a big mistake. If the Democrats do as well as expected, momentum will build in their quest to do away with the king altogether and establish a republic. Time to take extreme measures.

On the morning of Wednesday, March 2, 1955, Cambodians awake to extraordinary news. As they rub the sleep from their eyes and reach for their wirelesses, they are greeted with a pre-recorded message from their king. He's prepared it in secret. Not even his family know what's coming. Sihanouk's voice crackles over the airwaves as he announces that he is abdicating. In the interests of the country, he says, he is giving up the throne so that he can enter the fray as an elected politician.

His father, once overlooked for the succession, will now succeed him as king. The upcoming elections are promptly postponed to give Sihanouk time to create his own brand new political movement. He calls it the Sankhum, the people's community. The ex-king has played a blinder. When the rescheduled elections are held, the sankum sweeps the board, albeit with a good dose of electoral fraud and voter intimidation. Neither the Democrats nor the Krom Prakyakon wins a single seat.

Over the next two decades, Sihanouk will flit in and out of the office of Prime Minister. Sometimes whether he officially holds the position or not will seem little more than a technicality. Sihanouk will loom over Cambodian politics. The election is significant for our story because it's the moment that Pol Pot, as he will become, loses faith once and for all in the political system. The Krom Prakyakon has tried to win power through legitimate means. It's been a catastrophic failure. Tsar's conclusion is as follows.

The one who has power in his hands is the one who controls the outcome. As Sihanouk takes office with a massive, if dubious, mandate, the former monarch is empowered like never before. He begins a brutal crackdown on the Krom Prakyakon and other leftist groups. Tsar and his fellow communists are under no illusion now. Independence is no good if it just means swapping the French for an authoritarian prime minister. If they are to achieve their goals, it must be through armed insurrection. By now, Salazar is living a number of different lives. There is the revolutionary stowed away in

the jungle, and then there is the quiet man who periodically slips back into the city to stay at his rented house in a down-at-heel neighborhood in southern Phnom Penh. It's a scantily furnished home, boasting just a sleeping mat and a few books, an easy place to remain inconspicuous. And then there's the Tsar who drives a flashy black Citroën. He uses it to take out a lady friend. They get on well, but she is very ambitious. When his chances of climbing the greasy

pole fade in the aftermath of the elections, she breaks off with him. Worse still, she soon hooks up with one of his political rivals. Tsar marries on the rebound, in 1956, at the age of 31, to a woman named Q. Ponnery, five years his senior. The union seems ill-fated from the start. They are unable to have children.

In times to come, she will struggle with her mental health. Although one might wonder who wouldn't if they found themselves married to Pol Pot. Fermenting revolution might be one hell of a ride, but it isn't exactly lucrative. To pay the bills, Sa gets a job as a teacher of history and French at a private school. He's well thought of by fellow staff and beloved by his students. His colleagues have no idea that the charming face he presents to them is but one of many. Tsar is balancing his domestic existence with his professional one, and both of those with his continued involvement in secret with the Marxist-Leninist revolutionary movement.

When writing or speaking, he continues to use aliases to preserve his privacy. He is adamant that he must remain an anonymous political actor, for now at least. In 1958, a parcel bomb is delivered to the royal palace. It's the cue for Sihanouk to instigate another clampdown on his rivals, this time spearheaded by his formidable chief of staff, Lon Nol. Tsar happens to have been at school with Lon Nol's brother. But that connection counts for nothing as Nol batters the communists, whittling them down to just a few hundred members.

Emboldened, Sihanouk soon accepts the role as head of state for life, cementing his seemingly unassailable position. Increasingly authoritarian at home, the king-turned-prime-minister-turned-supreme-ruler plays a careful game abroad. He wants to play East and West off against each other, minister-turned-Supreme Ruler, plays a careful game abroad. He wants to play East and West off against each other. But he must be careful. Since at least 1954, the Americans are replacing the French as the pre-eminent Western influence

in Vietnam. Their military involvement will scale up over the coming years, with consequences that still reverberate today. Sihanouk does not want to provoke the United States. He's set on remaining officially neutral. The overpowering dynamic here is the American war in Vietnam. Can you imagine if our civil war went on forever and Canada had to deal with the American civil war

if it went up to their border. The Vietnam War was a huge shadow on everything. And Prince Sihanouk, now as the prime minister, the elected prime minister, said the only way Cambodia can survive is a neutral country. No revolutions, no siding with the communists or non-communists in Vietnam. No revolutions, no siding with the communists or non-communists in Vietnam. He made a very practical alliance with China and the Soviet Union to be neutral, to not join the Americans. And then he made a not very secret border deal with the Vietnamese communists and non-communists. And the unspoken deal was he does that and they're not supporting any communist revolution to overthrow him. Sa and his comrades need to up their game.

In 1960, they reconfigure themselves as the Workers' Party of Kampuchea. They are led by a man called Chu Samuth. Sa sits third in the hierarchy. In July 1962, Chu Samuth leaves his home to visit a local market. He doesn't realize he's being watched. Chu is arrested by the security services, taken off for questioning. He's tortured and later killed. Such is life under Sihanouk's new regime.

It is, however, a crucial moment for Salah Tsar. He is chosen to fill the vacant role of party leader. There's all kinds of theories about why he disappeared. At the time, people thought that Sihanouk was behind it. Subsequently, people wonder if Salah Tsar Pol Pot was behind it. By then, Salah if Solotar Pol Pot was behind it. By then, Solotar had proved to be plodding, studious. He was not such a sparkling character at all. I mean, if you look at his record, no one would have picked him as being a potential star of anything. It's amazing that he got along as far as he did. I talked to his sister-in-law, and she describes him very much as the solid leader,

dependable, knew where he was going, organized. There is charisma, obviously, or he couldn't be where he grew. As Sihanouk becomes an increasingly hard-nosed ruler, tensions rise across Cambodia. In one instance, student protests over the rights of children to ride their bikes on public footpaths descends into violence and chaos. When a demonstrator dies in police custody, two officers are beaten to death by a mob.

An incandescent Sihanouk responds by publishing the names of 34 known leftist agitators, among them Salah Tsar. The anonymity he has fiercely guarded is under serious threat. Tsar realizes his days of juggling a triple life are done. He must focus first on survival and then on revolution. Tsar's response is to retreat once more to a jungle encampment over the border in Vietnam. Only this time, his hosts are not the Viet Minh, they are the Viet Cong, the communist guerrillas of South Vietnam. Camp life with the Viet Cong is every bit as awful as with the Viet Minh.

This camp is totally basic. A few huts, bunkers, and of course, knowing the Viet Cong, tunnels. Jaundice and malnutrition are rife. Desperate measures are taken in search of protein. Elephants, tigers and monkeys all appear on the menu at one time or another. Mostly they make do with jungle moths, de-winged and barbecued. In 1964 the Cambodian communists branch out. They leave the Viet Cong to set up their own

base, Office 100 as it's known. Despite the hardship, Salat Sa is right at home in the jungle, or travelling among the villages. Away from the capital, Sa's group is evolving a signature rustic take on communism. He becomes increasingly anti-proletariat. Factory workers who wish to join him are shunned. proletariat. Factory workers who wish to join him are shunned. He is all in on the revolution by the peasantry, to whom he attaches almost mythical status. Sihanouk's top-down rule is breeding the conditions necessary for an uprising. The elite minority continue to enjoy a lifestyle far beyond the dreams of most,

but the cities are now bulging with rural emigres, looking to escape poverty brought on by a succession of bad harvests. At the same time, the student population is larger than ever, and when they graduate, they find there aren't enough jobs to go around. Under Prince Sihanouk, he had a very strong sense of preserving the beauty of Phnom Penh and the beauty of Cambodia to the point that he drove a lot of the young people crazy, that he was trying to hold it into amber. Sihanouk's foreign policy is creaking too. US-backed troops from South Vietnam are mounting raids against communists over the Cambodian border.

Sihanouk is infuriated by this violation of Cambodian territorial integrity. Indeed, Sihanouk cuts off relations with Washington altogether. He fosters ever closer ties with Beijing. Mao Zedong is happy to help him. Mao Zedong is happy to help him But Sihanouk is spinning a lot of plates And it feels like only a matter of time before one of them falls and shatters Toward the end of 1966 Salazar and his team go in for yet another rebrand

They are now the Communist Party of Kampuchea It doesn't quite catch on. Sihanouk starts referring to his jungle enemies as the Khmer Rouge, the Cambodian Reds. It's a name that Tsar initially rejects. But it sticks, and in time, it will become a badge of honour. Sihanouk gives the green light for a fresh set of elections. As head of state for life, he will retain overall power, whatever the result. But he's happy to swell the ranks of right-wing members of parliament.

The result is an influx of new MPs, ready to be whipped into shape by Lon Nol, Sihanouk's fearsome fixer. His hand may be strengthened in Phnom Penh, but by early 1967 discontent with Sihanouk and his government is spreading even faster through the countryside. Farmers have been smuggling rice over the border, supplying the Viet Cong for a healthy fee. But now Cambodian government troops requisition their crops. A mass clampdown by the state sees widespread arrests and extrajudicial killings.

Life has become cheap. All sides are increasingly immune to violence. In hindsight, this will be recognised as a steady process of dehumanization. The Communists divide the country into a series of zones, each under the purview of a separate governing committee. Tsar tells them to prepare for armed struggle. By January 1968, he's ready to go. He's come a long way from his days skulking the corridors of the royal palace, giving

his Buddhist teachers the runaround, or lounging in cafes in Paris. The time has come. The revolution is here. To be continued... launched their revolutionary war against Siamuk and his government. America's action in Vietnam escalates, spilling over the border with catastrophic consequences. The enigmatic Pol Pot will emerge from the bloodshed to become the single most powerful man in the land. In Phnom Penh, at the outset of year zero, the true horror will begin. That's next time on Real Dictators.